Lavoie, Emilie Grace

My practice interrogates the space between an object and its ecology: the relationship between material practice and complex systems, such as living ecosystems, and the environments in which they are situated. My main interest is our current ecological crisis and the precarious relations which now exist between living species and their contexts largely as a result of human interventions in the natural world. This growing awareness of the fragility of the natural world, its biodiversity, life processes, and interactions among organisms, transforms my view of the world and inspires my imagination. My practice relies on a temporal process of making, sustained through multiple stages of hand production. This approach to making allows me to intervene in and potentially rebuild more holistic and regenerative ecological relations. Exploration of materials related to ceramics and textiles are produced in an effort to create an object that mirrors the transformation of an ecosystem, or at the very least demonstrates the object as dependent on the ecology of the studio.